I love, love LOVE every one of these ideas.

Personally, I don't need any reward for killing bots. Though it would be nice to have an achievment linked to it.

How awesome would it be, upon killing 10 bots, to see "Achievement unlocked: Hand of the Night Mother" pop up on the screen? I'd be pretty excited, anyway......

This is brilliant and full of win! Thank you for the laugh. Bots suck but at least we can still laugh..

I LOVE this idea. This was a amazing read and perfect solutions. However, the company knows full well who is a bot and what account is doing what. If they made the game super hard for bots then they would lose that carrot on the stick to purchase more copies and Zen would lose money. They want bots in this game and will only combat them enough to make the player base think they are working hard at it, and only ban enough to make the farmers make a return to make money to purchase another copy. I wish we could kill the bots, would be such a fun day.

Kenthros wrote: »

I LOVE this idea. This was a amazing read and perfect solutions. However, the company knows full well who is a bot and what account is doing what. If they made the game super hard for bots then they would lose that carrot on the stick to purchase more copies and Zen would lose money. They want bots in this game and will only combat them enough to make the player base think they are working hard at it, and only ban enough to make the farmers make a return to make money to purchase another copy. I wish we could kill the bots, would be such a fun day.

Well, that's the line you have to bring them to, but not so they cross. They'll stick around botting, being inefficient, and Zenimax still gets paid. The goldfarmers are going to allow a certain amount of penalty (even after they realize what is going on) before they put effort into new accounts, especially when it comes to their higher level bots and bank storage mules.

The question is how much can we screw with them before they decide to start over?

I like the punching bag idea.

I've always been in favor of public punishment and a Hall of Shame lists.

Noswell wrote: »

sylviermoone wrote: »

How awesome would it be, upon killing 10 bots, to see attached"Achievement unlocked: Hand of the Night Mother" pop up on the screen? I'd be pretty excited, anyway......

I think Pimphand of the Night Mother would be a little more satisfying and appropriate.

OH SNAP!! Even better!!!

Really creative ideas from the OP. Unfortunately due to the harshness of these countermeasures it is very unrealistic that zenimax or any other mmo developer will implement something like this. The main problem is false positives, what do you think will happen if legit players are targeted by some or all of these action. And please don´t say that it won´t happen, it will. It happened before, people got banned for nothing etc. So to keep false positives at an absolut minimum, a human has to make such decisions (and not even that is a guarantee) . That would be a lot of effort and time consuming.

that's thinking outside the box. +1

The ignorance in this thread is amuzing me keep going^^

No matter what is done with the Bots, all efforts are hampered by ensuring legit players aren't affected. Sure, some do get accidentally marked as a bot currently. It isn't fun. So ANYTHING that is done HAS to be well thought out so as NOT to affect real players.

If I was farming low level mats on my lvl 50 tank (for either the ore to get the procs or for crafted gear for my guildies), I wouldn't want to be called a Bot. I wouldn't want to be banned. Would you?

Take an argument and flip it as a test. AutoBan any toon in Coldharbor - because they'd have to be a bot. But what about high level toons in low level areas? As a paying customer, don't I have the right to go where I want to go? And what ever elaborate plan devised by the original poster, just imagine you got that done to your character. Your legitimate character.

There are no easy and quick solutions.

I do like the Valor and Justice system in WoW. You 'do things' (quests, dungeons, etc) and you get gold but you also get JPs and VPs. You use that to buy the nicer gear. This 'currency' can't be traded - it just sits on your character sheet. Some form of liquid currency will be needed (i.e. repairs or flasks or food or mats). Maybe start banning real players who BUY gold. If no one was BUYING gold, these farmers wouldn't be in the game...

Well, the issue with low levels not being able to use friends/guilds/whatever to get to a higher level area wouldn't be solved by closing gates. The reason is because the goldfarmers will just use no clipping and teleport hacks to get there. They already do that to move bots instantly to vendors and into dungeons and so forth.

It would only work if there was a system that alerted the Gamemasters when a low level player was in the no fly zone. If only people hacking could get low level players to high level areas, then clearly all low level players in those high level zones are hackers.

But that goes against the idea of having freedom in ESO as well. I went to Coldharbor at level 15, and had fun exploring. I don't think many players did that, though, and personally it is a freedom I'd be willing to give up.

It's true, there's no cut clean method for automatic marking for goldfarmers. They are going to evolve and escalate to match the changes. There are counters to all the solutions I gave, some easier than others. Unless there's some ingenious coder that somehow unlocks a true detection method for finding these scumbags, there is always going to be friendly collateral damage.

Honestly, I'm willing to accept some casualties in order to purge the infected mass of bots, but that's me. If a thousand bots get banned and one real player gets banned (and fights it and successfully by proving they are a real person and they get reinstated), I wouldn't mind that at all. ESO's lawyers probably think differently.

The other option is a team of hunter seekers that cover a 24/7 watch, but that's also more positions than Zenimax might be willing to pay.

@Skylias there is a huge difference between a player farming and a bot farming. Players are running around, and even if they take the same route again and again, each path is slightly different. Bots aren't like that, they literally run the exact same path again and again. Or, they sit there and never move and loot the same spot for hours, and they don't respond to tells, and they don't ever log off. A player farming Jute for instance probably wouldn't sit at one resource node and wait for it to respawn. They'd run to the next one because it's more efficient.

jktz122_ESO wrote: »

just put them all on their own little server with unkillable enemies and no mail.. and unconnected to the megaserver ..

Stop and think for a minute. How do you put them on their own server? They have to be detected to begin with. This is NOT something that can be automated. Computers are not sentient. You'd basically have to have hands-on support staff constantly watching everything.

There is no magic bullet that will allow a computer to "detect" a bot. Bot detection is a cat and mouse game. Detection method is found - bot maker immediately removes bot to make it detectable again.

If you're suggesting players flag bots, that is unworkable. There would have to be extensive oversight and hands-on verification. Because I can guarantee that within 5 minutes of such a system being implemented, someone would decide that they didn't like someone else, and would abuse it to "banish" them to the "bot realm". This would be *immensely* abused almost immediately after implementation.

If you're suggesting players just report suspected bots...that's what we do now. We report them, GM's show up when they can and ban them. I'm sure we would all like this process to happen faster, but still...how do you ban all these bots "instantly" without some sort of verification? The faster it is done, and the less verification there is, the greater the chance of innocent players getting caught up in it. Where are the safeguards to protect people that just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time? For instance, going up to a jute node, not knowing there are 3 bots underneath it.

As real as Tamriel might look on your screen, it is not a real place. It is just a big database filled with numbers. Bots don't have anything magical that makes them look different from other players.

Sariias wrote: »

@Skylias there is a huge difference between a player farming and a bot farming. Players are running around, and even if they take the same route again and again, each path is slightly different. Bots aren't like that, they literally run the exact same path again and again. Or, they sit there and never move and loot the same spot for hours, and they don't respond to tells, and they don't ever log off. A player farming Jute for instance probably wouldn't sit at one resource node and wait for it to respawn. They'd run to the next one because it's more efficient.

While true, numerous times while out and about, I've mined a node then left myself there while I make a coffee, bathroom or whatever, in many mmos.

I now always move somewhere else for fear of a GM sending me a tell while I'm afk.

Not a big deal, but it's the drip drip drip effect of bots forcing us to play a different way to how we want to.